Odd Dragon Out
by Ivyvine
Summary: Novi the Dratini didn't ask to be born red, but he's learned to deal with the trials of being different... until the insane Gorebyss Kalisthan puts his family in terrible danger. Outcast and alone, Novi wonders if he can ever escape the fate of a freak.


**Prologue**

Novi was dreaming of Corsola. There was a big group of them, swimming around peacefully.

Suddenly, the group broke apart. The Corsola fled. _What are they afraid of? _Novi wondered.

Then he saw it.

It was a bright red Corsola. The normal, pale pink ones stayed away from it, but the only thing different about it was its color.

The normal Corsola came back in an angry pink swarm, and now they were attacking their red brother.

_Leave him alone,_ Novi shouted at them. _He didn't pick the appearance he was born with. It's not fair. LEAVE HIM ALONE!_

**1. The Red Dratini**

Novi felt himself tumbling through the water. He opened his eyes. His older brother, a Dragonair named Kelsu, had pushed him from his nest.

"Ugh, not _again_! Wake us all up, will you?" Kelsu snapped.

"Hey, _I_ was sleeping just fine until your fat mouth opened," muttered a drowsy Adroga, Kelsu's twin and equally obnoxious. Still lying down, Adroga turned over in his nest and muttered something under his breath.

"And my 'fat mouth' opened _why_? Because Novi here was talking in his sleep. _Again_. This has to be the third or fourth time." Kelsu turned to Novi. "Sometimes I think you're more trouble than you're worth, you red freak."

_Red_ _freak._ Novi hated it, but he knew it was true. Very rarely, Pokémon were born in unusual colors; for lack of a better term, these were called "shiny Pokémon" because of the way they seemed to give off sparkles in the sunlight. But shiny Dratini were always a lovely shade of lavender. Novi was bright red.

Novi was about to protest when his sister, Flosa, a Dratini and his only sibling who didn't use every waking minute to remind him of his "condition", spoke up from beside him. "Maybe if you would stop being as blind as a Zubat, then you could see that he's worth as much as any other Dratini. Why should his color make a difference to that?"

Kelsu glared at Novi, but directed his words at Flosa. "Humans," he growled. "If they catch so much as a glimpse of those blindingly red scales, you can bet your earfins that they'll follow Novi here and capture him—along with the rest of _us_! To them Novi is nothing more than a novelty, and you know it."

"I say we send him out to be captured or eaten or something," Adroga spoke up without turning around. "Then at least we won't have to worry about that scenario anymore."

Novi shuddered. "No! Don't!"

"Then instead of waking us all up early, go make yourself useful, you red freak!" Kelsu hissed.

"How? Should I find food, or—"

"Find food, become someone's food—I don't care, just get out of our sight!"

Flosa watched unhappily as Novi darted through the tunnel that led to the cave exit.

* * *

Novi kept swimming until he found a Corsola reef teeming with sea life. There were Finneon swimming in a school, a group of Lanturn flashing their lights at one another. Feebas and Magikarp peeked out from their hiding places between the Corsola. Chinchou, Goldeen, Remoraid, Seadra... The list went on and on. Novi had never seen so many different creatures in one place before.

He swam out farther to look for bits of coral shed from a Corsola. They were a bit crunchy, but they didn't taste bad when wrapped in kelp. He found a small piece and picked it up in his mouth. The Corsola who had shed it looked at Novi suspiciously but said nothing.

Suddenly a little Remoraid darted his way through the crowd of water Pokémon, shouting, "Make way! Make way! She's coming!"

The entire reef panicked. Apparently, they knew who "she" was. Novi decided it would be a very good idea to hide. He found a big rock with a crevice in it and slid inside.

The reef fell silent when the smaller Pokémon had hidden and the bigger ones had sort of moved off to the side, their eyes downcast. What were they waiting for? Novi wondered. He didn't have to wonder long.

A huge group of Huntail poured into the clearing where the other Pokémon had just been. Novi tried counting them and gave up after forty. No wonder even the biggest Pokémon looked anxious. A Gorebyss was at the head of the group. She was the most beautiful Gorebyss Novi had ever seen—not that he'd seen that many. The sunlight danced off her pale scales and made her look like a creature made of light.

"I am hungry," the Gorebyss declared. Her voice was as elegant and lovely as her appearance. "Umbrakaud, take your best trackers and find some kelp."

"But there are Finneon here, madam, your favorite. Would you like to hunt them instead?" said a Huntail with an unusually dark tail. That was a mistake. The Gorebyss scored him across the face with a whiplash movement of her tail.

"I will have what I want and I want kelp," she screeched. Her voice was so harsh compared with when she had first spoken that Novi wondered how both voices could have belonged to the same creature.

"Yes, Kalisthan!" said Umbrakaud, who seemed used to these violent outbursts. His face was bright red where Kalisthan's tail had hit it, and one of his eyes had closed, but he did not complain. He broke off from the group, followed by three or four others.

Then Novi heard something that chilled him to the core.

"Novi! It's Flosa. Where are you? NOVI!" His sister appeared in the clearing.

Flosa, here? With this insane Gorebyss around? Oh, no. This was bad. This was so bad! He had to warn her but—

"TRESPASSER! TRESPASSER!" the Gorebyss shrieked. She charged at Flosa, churning up bubbles with each lash of her tail. "This will teach you commoners to disrespect Kalisthan the Suncatcher!"

The Huntail posse surrounded Kalisthan and Flosa like a dark cloud, obscuring them from view. Novi screamed out Flosa's name and swam at the Huntail posse with all his might, but they pushed him back with their flippers and tails.

"The right to attack belongs solely to Kalisthan the Suncatcher unless otherwise ordered," one of the Huntail warned him.

"Yeah? Well, I don't take orders from your stupid Sunscratcher or whatever you call her!" Novi shouted. "My sister's in there!"

"Not for much longer," the Huntail said bluntly.

Novi flinched. _Not for much longer. _What was _that_ supposed to mean?

The Huntail posse suddenly dispersed. When Novi saw what had happened, he felt his heart turn to stone.

Kalisthan was hunched triumphantly over Flosa's withered and shrunken body. "It is rare that I am able to feast on such a delicacy as this," the Gorebyss purred, her voice both lovely and cold as ice. "I think Dratini is my new favorite flavor." Novi knew about the terrible way Gorebyss drained the bodily fluids of prey through their thin, tubular mouths, but seeing it in real life was an entirely new level of awfulness. His head swam and a feeling of hideous nausea bubbled up in his stomach. _Dead. She's dead. That Gorebyss killed her, and now she's—_

The Huntail named Umbrakaud and his team had just returned, most of them with wads of kelp in their mouths. "Shall we begin the search for more Dratini, madam?" asked Umbrakaud. Novi's heart pounded with relief. For once his unusual color seemed to be working in his favor; he must have looked so strange that no one even recognized him as a Dratini.

Then the Gorebyss turned and looked straight at Novi, as if she had always been aware of his presence. "There will be no need for that. I am sure this odd Dratini here will prove a perfectly delectable meal."

Novi bolted. The Huntail posse were right on his tail, but he was faster than them. Churning up a frothy wake of bubbles that nearly obscured him from sight, he turned a sharp corner and squeezed into a crevice in a rock just wide enough for him. Squirming, he forced his way deeper until he was certain the Huntail wouldn't be able to spot him.

Umbrakaud swam by very near where Novi was hidden, but Novi's hiding place proved effective. "I will send out scouts immediately, if it pleases you that is, madam," he called out.

"Oh, that will not be necessary." Kalisthan's melodic voice floated past. The Gorebyss gave a mad little giggle. "As it happens, I am in a sporting mood today, and I do so enjoy the thrill of the hunt. So we will let my little morsel go, for now." She raised her voice. "Do you hear me, my little red Dratini? Or should I call you... Novi?" She giggled again. Novi shivered uncontrollably as she went on. "Escape. Swim as far away as you can. Elude me for now but know this: I have connections throughout this sea. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, I will find you. And when that happens..." She sighed joyfully. "When that happens... it will be a feast to remember!"

The water Pokémon cautiously came out of hiding when Kalisthan the Suncatcher and her Huntail goons were out of sight. With a heart as heavy as a Bronzong, Novi wormed out of the stone crevice and headed for home.

* * *

"WHAT! Kalisthan? The Suncatcher?! Boy, do you have any idea what you've done?!"

Novi cringed. His father, a Dragonite named Crudel, was as fierce in his anger as Kalisthan had been when Flosa—

He gulped back the lump that formed in his throat whenever he thought of his precious sister. Gone. All because of him.

Crudel and Novi's mother, Natrixa, had always been particularly impatient with Novi. Then again, they hadn't exactly been rays of sunshine in raising Kelsu and Adroga, either. The twins were handsome and powerful, but power was just about all they had learned from their parents. It was as if the only thing that mattered to Natrixa and Crudel was how good their children made them look, regardless of how cruelly said children acted toward their siblings.

"Look, I said I'm sorry!" Novi cried. "But what can I do? I wish there were some way I could bring Flosa back, I really wish, but—"

"Flosa!" Kelsu crowed. He turned to his twin. "The little freak thinks this is about Flosa!"

"Let me tell you something, kid," said Adroga. "Flosa's death was an unfortunate accident, I'll admit. But if Kalisthan finds you here, we'll be accused of helping you hide, and then we'll _all_ be done for."

Novi turned desperately to Crudel and Natrixa, but both of his parents were nodding grimly.

"What should we do, then?" Novi asked for what felt like the hundredth time in the last five minutes.

"We? _We?!_" Kelsu was practically in hysterics. "_You_ caused all of this!"

"He's right, I'm afraid," said Natrixa. "Crudel?"

Novi gulped and looked slowly from his mother to his father. Crudel's expression was bleak.

"We have no choice," his father said heavily. "Novi, you must leave." He paused. "Forever."

Slow horror swelled up from the pit of Novi's belly. Leave. Forever. Always struggling to elude an insane monster that wanted to drain him of life. His vision puckered and flared.

He didn't stop to say goodbye, or to take his final bearings of this cave that had been his home his whole life. He was out of the cave before he even noticed he'd started to move.

_Outcast,_ he thought as he swam without direction, just needing to move, to get somewhere far, far away from here.

That was his reality now. He was an outcast. And he had nowhere to go.

Nowhere to hide.

_No matter where you go, no matter what you do, I will find you. And when that happens... it will be a feast to remember!_


End file.
